American Red Cross

Blackbaud announced that Princess Margaret Hospital Foundation selected Blackbaud Friends Asking Friends® as the online and offline event management solution for its newest fundraising event, Road Hockey to Conquer Cancer. The Foundation, which supports Canada’s leading cancer research institution, Princess Margaret Hospital, is using Friends Asking Friends combined with an innovative social media campaign to expand its supporter base and raise money for cancer research.

Local nonprofit organizations are feeling the heavy burden of a flailing economy, reporting another year of falling revenues.

But organizations refuse to sit idle, hatching plans for the new year to grow their fundraising efforts and stay afloat to serve as best they can. They say the problem isn’t the donors —they are feeling the financial pinch just as much as the nonprofits are — it’s simply the amount of money that is being raised.

Charitable donations are shifting from collection trays and kettles to laptops and cellphones as more nonprofits turn to online and mobile fundraising.

From Facebook to Colorado Gives Day, high-tech campaigns are sweeping the nonprofit world.

Leveraging technology from Denver-based mGive, the Salvation Army is testing a text-message fundraiser this holiday season to supplement its traditional Red Kettle Christmas campaign.

It ushers in a new phase of mobile giving, which might soon include higher single-donation limits, corporate sponsors and deeper engagement between nonprofits and donors via texts.

We have to embrace that a brand is a living mechanism. Thinking of a brand as simply a part of the marketing domain limits our view of its power.

Between President Barack Obama's successful 2008 online campaign and the myriad tactics government nominees employed this fall, the political sphere has provided many lessons in regards to online fundraising and communications.

Blackbaud has furthered its dedication to the local and nonprofit communities with its new focus on corporate citizenship. Blackbaud will continue to deliver on its corporate value "service to others makes the world a better place” with a team dedicated to the growth of its corporate citizenship commitment.

We'd like to introduce SOFII to those of our readers who don't know about it and share some of the fundraising efforts that have made it into the site's Best of the Best Showcase.

Texted donations currently are limited to $5 and $10 increments and capped by mobile phone companies at five a month from a single phone. Some nonprofits worry that they will cannibalize gifts that might come in larger amounts through more traditional channels like direct mail and online.

Perhaps most important, many nonprofits simply cannot afford the kind of promotional campaign needed to publicize mobile giving efforts, nor do they benefit from the kind of exposure that a round-the-clock, disaster-driven news event provides.

Which nonprofits wield the most influence on Twitter?

It’s not one of America’s most established or best-known organizations. It’s Charity: Water, a new global-development group that has 1.3 million followers, far more than any other charitable group we could find.

Only five organizations from the top 20 Twitter list appear on The Chronicle’s latest survey of the top 400 nonprofit organizations ranked by private donations: Red Cross (13), Unicef (21), Care (33), Save the Children (66), and World Wildlife Fund (173).

Blackbaud announced that its flagship fundraising solution, The Raiser’s Edge®, has been honored with its third User Satisfaction Award in the 2010 Donor and Member Management Solution Software Survey conducted by Campbell Rinker. During June and July, more than 2,800 users of nonprofit software and online solutions for donor and member management, mass communications, and fundraising were surveyed online. The survey gathers information on user satisfaction, pricing preferences, purchasing habits, and organizational scope.